Repubs boot Adams, go with Munisteri | Libs pick Glass | Greens go with ...

A little news made by the GOP, the Libertarians, and the Greens yesterday. First, from the freaky deaky confab in Dallas ...

Texas Republicans on Saturday ousted their firebrand leader, conservative activist Cathie Adams, in favor of Houston businessman Steve Munisteri.

Delegates chose Munisteri to be the new state party chairman during their convention in Dallas.

Munisteri focused his campaign on the party’s $500,000 debt. The retired lawyer says Republicans should be in better financial shape since they control both houses of the Legislature and all statewide offices.

The internal struggle spilled onto the floor of the Dallas Convention Center, prompting a sometimes chaotic roll call vote of the delegates. Once officials announced Munisteri had won, Adams backers then proposed that she be selected as the party’s vice-chairwoman. Delegates picked Houston-area Republican activist Melinda Fredricks instead.

Adams is known as a take-no-prisoners conservative. The former leader of the Texas Eagle Forum had often criticized senior members of her own party, bucked business leaders by opposing their cherished lawsuit reform efforts, called global warming a “hoax” and used the specter of Adolf Hitler to warn of perceived Obama administration excesses.

Adams had not been in the job very long. She was chosen to lead the party in a special election in October after Tina Benkiser stepped down. Munisteri won a two-year term, which will expire when the Republicans meet at their next state convention in 2012.

Adams, head of the Texas wing of Phyliss Schafly's Eagle Forum and heavily involved early on Perry's re-election campaign, was the incumbent insider with allegations of "too much debt" against her. So she got teabagged -- even though her opponent had to work hard to appear as crazy as Adams. He obviously succeeded.

The Libs met in Austin and made their pick for governor:

Kathie Glass, a Houston attorney, has won the Libertarian Party nomination for Governor of Texas. She will face incumbent Governor Rick Perry and former Houston mayor Bill White in November.

"This is our time. We will leave this convention as a united party," said Glass. "Texans want smaller government and more freedom. This is the message that we bring."

"Regrettably, our current governor seems intent on running our state "Washington D.C." style instead of Texas style. Runaway taxes, exploding spending, escalating debt, ever-growing government, and confiscation of property so he can give it to foreign interests -- where will it end?" asked Glass.

"Kathie was nominated by our convention because of her strength, knowledge of the issues, and her sense of what's right for Texas," said Executive Director Robert Butler. "She knows the Libertarian answer for today's issues and she can explain it well for every audience."

Oh yeah, Kinky Friedman was the keynoter at their convention. Wasn't it just a few months ago he was telling us he'd always been a Democrat?

"I really think the Democrats and the Republicans have become the same guy, admiring themselves in the mirror," Friedman said. "Rick Perry and Bill White — it's like the lesser of two boll weevils. This is the classic choice between paper or plastic. I think the day has come for the Libertarians."

And the Greens, also convening yesterday in Austin, selected ...

... well, I'm still waiting to hear who they selected between Deb Shafto and Bart Boyce. There's video here of both candidates (the second of two on that page). I have made some inquiries and searches but there seems to be no word officially that I can find. I'll update here when I know.

Update: kat swift late last night reports that Deb Shafto was selected by Green delegates as their gubernatorial candidate. Here's a bio page from her bid for Houston city council last year and another video from that campaign as well.

Update II: More on Glass and Shafto, via jobsanger, from the Fort Worth Star-Tel.

The Texas GOP: fighting scared, and loving it

Dave Mann thinks they're on a crusade:

You can always tell a politician's desperate to win reelection when he or she describes an election as good vs. evil, us vs. them, the fight of our lifetime. Or, as Gov. Rick Perry put it last night, "a struggle for the heart and soul of our nation."

Perry unleashed that beauty in a speech to the Texas Eagle Forum, as The Dallas Morning News reports.

It amazes me how candidates must over-hype elections these days to ensure their loyalists turn out. Sure, elections are important, but it's a damn midterm, people. Let's not go mistaking it for Antietam.

By my count, I've lived through the "most important election of all time" at least three times in this decade alone: the 2000 election was supposed to be the great struggle for the soul of America. So was 2006. Then, 2008 was billed as the most important election of our lifetime... or the next two years, whichever comes first, I guess.

Meanwhile, the governor was in rare form last night, casting this fall's election in stark religious terms:

"We will raise our voices in defense of our values and in defiance of the hollow precepts and shameful self-interests that guide our opponents on the left....

"Who do you worship? Do you believe in the primacy of unrestrained federal government? Or do you worship the God of the universe, placing our trust in him?"

I'm surprised they came out from under their bed long enough to have a convention. Of course, maybe the stench of the soiled mattresses from all that bed-wetting just forced them out.

Wayne Slater thinks they're under siege:

For a party in power, there seem to be a lot of martyrs in the Texas GOP.

Rush Limbaugh says Democrats are the party of victims. But it was the Republicans at their state convention in Dallas this weekend who clearly saw themselves as the oppressed and mistreated.

“The fox is in the henhouse,” said congressional candidate Stephen Broden of DeSoto of the myriad enemies bearing down on conservatives. “And they have one thing in mind — fried chicken salad.”

For all the Republicans’ success in Texas, the barbarians are apparently at the gate: liberals, atheists, socialists, Hollywood, the media, a White House at work on wrecking the country and ruining their lives.

Everywhere you looked at the Dallas Convention Center, people were wearing their victimhood.

Republicans in Texas as the persecuted minority. Victims. Martyrs. That is just classic, isn't it?

At the Voice of the Martyrs booth was a map of Christians persecuted for their religion. The John Birch Society was selling a book, Inside the Terror Triangle, in which Washington, Moscow and the Middle East have collaborated against hapless American families.

Even Gov. Rick Perry, in a speech to delegates, complained of unfair treatment.

“This administration,” he said of the Obama White House, “has a target on the back of Texas. I don’t think he likes us.”

The tea-party movement is mobilized around fear of government and resentment of elites that it believes looks down on conservatives. Aggrievedness is built into the blueprint.

“Conservatism is an oppressed minority today,” Limbaugh said on his radio show last year. “If ever a civil-rights movement was needed in America, it is for the Republican Party.”

You couldn't make this shit up if you were taking Oxycontin and hydrocodone in doses strong enough to kill a horse. Unless you're Limbaugh, of course.

At Saturday morning’s prayer rally in advance of convention business, Pam Faraone, who heads a support group for border sheriffs, called on something higher.

Faraone prayed for divine intervention to seal the US-Mexican border to stem the tide of illegal immigration: “Because of iniquity, the United States-Mexican border is shrouded in spiritual darkness.”

Still, pending God’s help on the border, there are some things the victims on this side can do, she said — noting in her prayer the sheriff of Hudspeth County, who is urging Texans on the border to arm themselves.

In the midst of the booths selling buttons and T-shirts just off the convention floor, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson struck just the right mood of a people besieged. He draped his campaign space with green camouflage, as if it were something out of Apocalypse Now.

Patterson’s full-page ad in the convention brochure shows him against a pockmarked wall, grim-faced, as if at war.

I think maybe Slater juxtaposed that description of Patterson: his face is pock-marked and the wall is grim. Oh well, he will always have his arsenal to console him after he leaves office at the end of the year.

"Clinging to their guns and Bibles" is a perfect description of the Republican Party of Texas.  They believe that the 2010 statewide elections -- like every other election year -- are a holy war for the future of Texas and Murrica.

And I'm not certain anyone should disavow them of the notion, since when they lose in November it benefits them the most to drop their security blankets and reassess their lives.

Sunday Funnies

RPT Convention crazy is spewing like BP's oil disaster

Thank God the Texas Tribune is there to document the atrocities.

Here's Joe Holley at the Chron with the quotes.

"We embrace fiscal disciplineship." -- Rick Perry

"My husband really does like coyotes." -- Anita Perry

"The world will be right when the Pope is a Texan." -- Rick Perry, speculating on the future prospects of Archbishop Jose Gomez, who recently left San Antonio to head the Los Angeles diocese

The rest read like any of the Chron's comment sections: 'ObamaMessiahsocialistkeepthechange' is your executive summary.

They're brewing some awfully bitter tea in the back of the hall, too.

The San Antonio Tea Party's booth is tucked in the back of the Dallas Convention Center's exhibit hall.

To find it, you must wind your way through a maze of commerce and ideology — power scooter rentals, John Birch Society videos, T-shirts backing hard-rock guitarist Ted Nugent for president in 2012, magnetic therapeutic jewelry and campaign buttons proclaiming “Hot Chicks Vote Republican.”

Don't you wish you were there?

If you were, you could have seen Kay Bailey holding Rick Perry's hand while pinching her nose shut with the other. Or the governor's $18-million-dollar elephant in the room. Or his double-wide.

Parked outside Eddie Deen's Ranch on South Lamar Street was a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom green-and-white mobile home that the Texas AFL-CIO is generously offering Governor Rick Perry for $1 a month.

It's the same home they offered to Perry in Austin last month, minus the furniture, issues of Food and Wine magazine, a supply of hair spray, and a 50-year-old stuffed German shepherd "that has sentimental value to me," said the group's president Becky Moeller. Those were tossed out to make the home easier to transport here and later to drive to Corpus Christi for the Texas Democratic Party convention at the end of June.

But the pure, unadulterated insanity belonged to one of the lesser lights down the GOP ballot, Todd Staples -- who has chosen to libel Hank Gilbert in a manner so vile it defies description.

Really, it's so unhinged it is incoherent. Rabies doesn't hold a candle to this kind of crazy. This isn't just garden-variety Obama Derangement Syndrome, but some South Carolina strain of shit-that-doesn't-fall-too-far-from-the-bat so divorced from reality that all you can do is point and laugh at it before the men in white coats carry it away in a straitjacket.

Congratulations, Todd. It takes a lot of work to top Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, and even Jerry Patterson. You win the the 2010 RPT Convention's Chock Fulla Nuts Award. And there's a whole 'nother day ahead.

OpenSourceDem on the Green challenge to Texas Democrats

A GOP operative in Arizona has rigged a reported $200,000 in-kind contribution to the Green Party in the form of sufficient signatures to get their candidates -- to be nominated this weekend -- on the statewide and select countywide ballots.

The Democratic Party perceives this as a short-term threat to Bill White’s campaign and is sensitive to a longer term threat to the status quo, particularly if the Green candidate for state comptroller gets enough votes to meet the statutory threshold (5%) for continued ballot access.

The GOP doubtless regards this as a “dirty trick” in the short term. They love such mischief almost as much as Democratic incumbents in Arkansas like vote suppression techniques such as reducing polling locations in a run-off.

GOP operatives such as the Club for Growth or intellectuals like the Federalist Society may see this ploy as a new wrinkle in their notion of a “Permanent Republican Majority”. That “majority” actually consists of money-driven pluralities in a mix of ratification elections and plebiscites wherein the lower the turnout, the better. Call this the “Citizens United” plutocracy.

In fact, both party establishments in Texas are plutocratic:

For the Democratic Party establishment (TDP), a “Way We’ve Always Done It!” sort of decrepit plutocracy is based on what was for a long time professional and more recently racial patronage, derived from bi-partisan concession-tending (“Jim Crow”). But, the GOP in Texas has long commanded more money, technology, and concessions. So, “Jim Crow” is just an epithet now, not really the regime here today. And TDP plutocracy is really just nostalgia -- Matt Angle’s wannabe plutocracy.

While profoundly reactionary, the GOP is conforming Texas government to radical privatization, deregulation, and economic discrimination using the state and federal Supreme courts. They now dominate the emerging police state it takes to levy and collect indirect and regressive taxes. But like East German Communists, they run as the anti-government, pseudo-populist party. Thus they innovate just enough in electoral politics and roll out sufficiently clever waves of earthy rhetoric to keep Texas a red state bastion despite its latent Democratic majority.

The GOP prevails by further dividing and demoralizing a Democratic Party already broken by professional patronage and further mediated by racial gerrymandering and quotas. A “green” party consisting of not so much anti-corporate as well-educated but chronically underemployed and mostly white environmental activists may do in the general election what the Tea Party has done in GOP primaries. (The Tea Party appears to be well-educated but chronically underemployed, property-rights and gun-rights-favoring, mostly white activists.)

If the jobless recovery continues, of course, there will be more and more well-educated but chronically underemployed (fill-in-the-blank), with increasingly non-white activists out there raging against both plutocracies.

Still, GOP operatives hope to focus the alienation in Texas right now on well-funded Democratic challengers who they can portray as “liberal” or in any case “corporate” establishment, while GOP incumbents portray themselves as moralistic, “small-government”, “cloth coat”, rubber wader”, libertarians or eat-what-you-catch-or-kill hunter/gatherers like Sarah and Todd Palin.

None of this theatrical politics was new even before Citizens United. The Green Party thing is just another wrinkle in a story now decades old.

It could backfire several different ways:

1. Techno-Legal

The Red-Green petition drive can probably be voided by invalidating individual signatures under the exclusive affiliation provisions of state law using the TEAM and VEMACS voter registration systems. But that will take a tech-savvy lawyer who understands those systems. The Green petitions are probably legal under the state exemption on corporate funding for “party-building” activities. In any case, the GOP Secretary of State cannot be trusted to do the signature validation competently or even disinterestedly. (Note: The SOS has approved the Greens' petition signatures, but the Greens and the Democrats have agreed to a two-week moratorium in order to authenticate the legality of the Greens' benefactor.)

2. Trust and Confidence: Try It For A Change!

The GOP noise machine has reached maximum volume very early and is getting very tiresome. By speaking intelligently and calmly, both Barack Obama and Bill White may well elicit the sort of confidence and trust that may be more important in this mid-term election than enthusiasm, especially fake Astroturf  “enthusiasm” or “rage”.

3. Take ‘Em Head On

While the Tea Party will fall in lockstep with the GOP or stay home and sulk, loyal Oil Patch and Texas Environmental Democrats can compete head on and outnumber Green Party activists in every venue, including the Democratic state convention, taking place in two weeks in Corpus Christi.

4. Hey Diddle Diddle, Straight Up The Middle

Even more importantly, Bill White and Jeff Weems can provide real leadership on environmental issues and energy policy ... provided they can break out from the lame Lone Star Project strategy of empty rhetoric in targeted races underwritten by the TDP.

5. Straight D Plus

Finally, if and only if a few of the big, urban county Democratic Parties can mobilize high-information “surge” voters -- a legacy of 2008 primary and general elections -- then Democrats can co-opt more voters from a would-be Green Party than the other way around. The key will be “straight D plus” voting instructions. It is true that a straight G vote is just another spoiler campaign. But a straight D plus a vote for the Green comptroller candidate (where the TDP left a void) would help Bill White (and Ann Harris Bennett in Harris County) and hurt the GOP. Of course, that assumes Democrats have tech-savvy political operatives, something more than just nostalgia to run on and run with.

The downside on Straight D Plus is that the Greens, having gotten on the ballot in service to the GOP in 2010, would be on the ballot in 2012 courtesy of Democrats. That poses a fundamental question for Democrats:

-- Do we want or expect to be the dominant one of two collaborating parties in a bi-partisan plutocracy (“Jim Crow”) ever again, or do we want or have any expectation of ever being a robustly competitive party in a multi-party democracy, not any sort of plutocracy?

That is the sort of historic challenge that a placeholder like Boyd Richie does not recognize and has not faced. It is one Bill White may have to overcome in addition to running his own race if he expects to win statewide, in effect with no more than half a party. If Democrats expect to win elections in Texas, they will have to embrace change as a party. We need to realize that parties which nominate by convention and take unlimited corporate contributions have a huge advantage over parties nominating by primary election and using small donations to leverage corporate contributions and other large donations. That is the way to perpetuate plutocracy without regard to colorful rhetoric or other aesthetic devices to distinguish our brand of plutocracy from the other one. The plutocrats with the most money cannot govern well, but they can win elections dominated by mercenary consultants and mass media.

So behind all the tricks of mercenary political operatives, theirs and ours, there really are some profound questions for Democrats to answer if we are ever to make anything out of our latent majority statewide, our transient one in Harris County, a fairly reliable one in Dallas County, and of course the potentially valuable one in Houston.

Whose ass to kick

Other Ass We'd Like to See Kicked

Kick Peter Sutherland's Half-BP Half-Goldman Sachs Ass
Kick the Supreme Court's Corporations-Are-People Ass
Kick All Lobbyists' Asses Out of Washington, D.C.
Kick Lloyd Blankfein's Ass Into Federal Prison
Kick Monsanto's Genetically-Engineered Ass
Kick Joe Lieberman's Ass Out of the Senate
Kick Congress' Cutting-Unemployment Ass
Kick Jake Knotts' Ass Back to 19th Century
Kick Larry Summers' Ass Back to Harvard
Kick Blackwater's Ass Out of Afghanistan
Kick Dick Cheney's Ass to The Hague
Kick Money's Ass Out of U.S. Politics

http://www.michaelmoore.com

Perry's top politico connected to Greens' Santa Claus

Matt Angle busts Dave Carney.

Documents obtained by the Lone Star Project reveal that Rick Perry’s top political advisor Dave Carney has a long and direct link to the manager of the Texas Green Party/GOP ballot scam. In 2004, Carney teamed-up with Texas ballot scam leader Tim Mooney to gather signatures to put Ralph Nader on the ballot in order to assist the George W. Bush Presidential campaign.

In 2004, Carney worked with a group called “Choices for America, LLC” which was “run” by Mooney – the same Republican operative who collected signatures for the Green Party of Texas in 2010. (Dallas Morning News, August 12, 2004) Both Choices for America, LLC, the shell group used in 2004, and Take Initiative America, LLC the shell group used in 2010, are registered to Charles Hurth III. (Missouri SOS)

According to the Dallas Morning News, “Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner said the governor's campaign had nothing to do with the petition-gathering effort.” It now appears that statement is likely not true.

That's a hell of a way to open your coronation weekend, Governor. And the Greens will now feel greater pressure to withdraw their petitions.

This just reeks all the way around. It's really a shame that the Green Party got manipulated in this fashion by the Republicans, but it's par for the course for goons like Carney.

Brains surgery scheduled

Much neglected for some time now, this blog will undergo some significant changes here in the coming days as I rework the template, overhaul the blogroll, monetize the site a bit, and re-enable commenting to make it more user-friendly.  You may see some changes that don't stick around for long as I experiment with the look and feel.

While the dust settles, enjoy these something old/something new blog brethren and sisteren:

-- The Yellow Something Something (formerly the Yellow Doggerel Democrat, still Steve Bates)

-- The Southern Shift

-- The Existentialist Cowboy

-- Local Texans

-- From Austin to A&M

-- Billiard Cues

-- and Newsy, which provides this video on the ever-increasing amount of money in politics:

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Texas Shorts

We're going briefs, not boxers, as we catch up with the news.

-- The Republican Party of Texas opens its state convention this weekend. We'll be posting occasional updates on the free-flowing crazy (hey, there's only so much we can all take). Here's a teaser from the Fort Worth Startlegram; the header is "Texas GOP delegates not keen on 'sensible immigration reform'"; emphasis at the end is mine:

Norm Adams wants Texas to find middle ground in the nationwide immigration debate.

The 65-year-old Houston insurance agent caused a ruckus Tuesday by presenting his "sensible immigration policy" -- a proposal that the Texas Republican Party reverse course and support a path to legalization -- to party faithful gathered in Dallas to prepare for their state convention.

His proposal is designed to secure the borders, deport noncitizens with violent records and give visas to illegal immigrants, who would pay taxes at a higher rate than citizens. In the process, he said, Republicans might regain countless Hispanic voters who shifted to the Democratic Party.

"The Republican Party needs to come together on a sensible immigration policy -- one that is not amnesty, one that is not deportation," Adams told a committee working on party platform issues. "If we get this passed, Texas will set the standard.

"I want this party to come together, folks," he said. "I hope and pray you people give this serious consideration."

Adams' proposal drew heated responses. More than 10,000 Republicans are expected in Dallas for their two-day convention, where they will approve a 2010 platform.

Sara Legvold, a delegate from Keller, was among those to speak against Adams' proposal.

"No compromises, no guest work, until we have our borders under control," she said. "I want to deport everybody who is illegal -- children, dogs, pets, birds.

"My compassion has dried up, just as my tax dollars have dried up."

Your compassion, your tax dollars, your brain, your soul. I hope your God calls you home very soon, Sara.

Update: they've got a three-way of nuts going for the chair.  Get your corn popped now.

-- The Greens made the ballot. Let the lawsuits begin. In Harris County, their candidates for county clerk and statehouse representative in District 144 will very likely be problematic for the Dems.

Update: once again via South Texas Chisme, the Greens won't be on the ballot if it turns out their Republican benefactor has violated the law:

Kat Swift, state coordinator for the Green Party in Texas, said the party's attorney is awaiting written confirmation that an outside group that bankrolled the effort is not a corporation.

Texas law forbids campaign contributions from corporations.

"Unless that paperwork comes through, all of it on the up and up, we're not moving forward with it," Swift said. ...

Swift said if the party gets written confirmation that it can legally list Take Initiative America as the in-kind donor, it intends to move forward and field candidates in the fall campaign. She said the group has until June 30 to make the decision.

-- After seeing Bill White's tax returns, an envious Governor Coyote Killer called for him to quit the race. It's just too funny. The comments in the Chronic are even running against Perry... no small feat.

Still no word on debates.

-- I learned this week that Boyd Richie has an opponent for chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Talk about David versus Goliath Neck...

-- The Trib also reminds us that there is likely to... well, maybe possibly ... be a contest for Speaker of the Texas House next year, as Joe Straus has managed to alienate several Republicans and most all of the Democrats. Some history here about how speakers never used to serve multiple terms until the 20th century, and that the consolidation of power began with Billy Clayton, who was of course scandalized -- along with dozens of others -- by L'Affaire Sharpstown in the early '70's.

-- Tory Gattis has his post up about the charter amendment petition drive organized by Renew Houston. His conclusion:

So my feelings on the initiative are mixed: I agree with the concept, but have serious concerns about the details - especially the open-ended development impact fees.  Unfortunately at this point, the language is set - and I think that language will bring out some tough opponents in the fall.  In addition, this is shaping up as the year of the angry, anti-tax, Tea Party voter, which does not bode well at all for initiatives like this.  DOA?  Maybe.  We'll just have to see how it plays out.

So he thinks it makes the ballot but gets rejected by the voters. I believe that's a fair handicap of the race today.

Another reason I will only ever have a dog

Halter falters, and other notes from last night

Heading into Super Tuesday, Blanche Lincoln looked like a political goner. The embattled Democratic senator was down in the polls and the target of millions of dollars in TV ads and get-out-the-vote efforts in Arkansas from labor unions and other liberal advocacy groups looking to unseat her. But with the help of former President Bill Clinton, who appeared in a last-minute TV ad on her behalf, Lincoln defied the odds, besting her challenger, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, 52 percent to 48 percent.

The progressives -- MoveOn, DailyKos, -- as well as the unions mobilized and came up short. This one tastes bad.

Still, Lincoln's victory celebration will be short-lived. In a state that has steadily moved to the right in recent elections, she faces an uphill battle to win re-election this November. Recent polls show her losing to the GOP challenger, Rep. John Boozman, by double digits.

Normally, a Democrat in Lincoln's situation would be able to depend on outside groups for election help, but many of the usual suspects, like the Service Employees International Union and League of Conservation Voters, cast their lots against her in the primary. Will those groups reverse position and lend support to the woman they tried to defeat?

No, we won't. As Barbara Morrill says:

Look for this to be a Republican pick-up in November.

The White House -- !?@*#!? -- is already kicking the unions when they're down. That's some shit, idn't it? kos:

The GOP establishment tries to nominate electable candidates, and gets sabotaged by the teabaggers. We're trying to nominate electable candidates, and we get sabotaged by the Democratic Party establishment.

All righty then. On to the Great West. First, California.

The Golden State's political history is clear: centrist Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson (a moderate before he became an anti-immigrant demagogue) can win statewide elections. Right-wing Republicans cannot. The state is just too culturally liberal and too ethnically diverse. This year, GOP primary voters could have chosen a slightly dull, highly wonky, pro-choice former congressman named Tom Campbell. Campbell, according to a recent Los Angeles Times poll, would have led incumbent Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer by seven points in the general election. Instead, they chose former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who opposes the right to abortion, can't decide if global warming is real, won the endorsement of Sarah Palin, and according to the Times poll, trails Boxer by the same margin Campbell leads her. Fiorina didn't win the GOP Senate primary only because she is more conservative; she also bought it with her vast personal wealth. But her combination of conservatism and inexperience gives Boxer a chance to sneak back into office.

Fiorina wasn't the only former CEO who won a Republican primary last night. Mark McKinnon from the Daily Beast (who's only occasionally insipid):

In the California governor’s race, Meg Whitman’s victory over state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner places her in a faceoff against the quintessential career politician -- Jerry Brown, governor of California from 1975 to 1983, then mayor of Oakland and now the state attorney general. In the run-up to the primary, Brown sat on his campaign coffers waiting for the definitive insider-outsider battle to begin.

Whitman, who made history at the helm of eBay generating $8 billion in revenues, has said she is prepared to spend as much as $150 million to reach California’s 38 million residents. Those deep pockets will be necessary with statewide ads running $3 million a week.

More from HuffPo:

It also will set off an election season of big-money campaigns and high drama in the nation's most populous state, pitting two deep-pocketed Silicon Valley business stars against stalwarts of the Democratic Party establishment. ...

 The heated battle with Poizner to win over conservative GOP primary voters forced Whitman to move to the right on issues such as abortion and illegal immigration, moves that could hurt her against Brown in November.

Democrats and moderate independents comprise two-thirds of the electorate in California. Without a serious primary challenger, Brown has positioned himself as a moderate, pledging not to raise taxes and to make the kind of spending cuts that Whitman also campaigned on.

California is going to have almost as much fun as we are here in Deep-In-The-Hearta.

The Teabagger ladies won in Nevada ...

Exhibit B: Nevada, where everyone agrees that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is extremely vulnerable. But perhaps not quite vulnerable enough to lose to Sharron Angle, a woman who wants to abolish social security, the department of education and the income tax. Reid did his best to make Angle his opponent, spending heavily to undermine the more moderate GOP frontrunner, Sue Lowden. It seems to have worked. Angle is the perfect symbol of the Republican base in 2010: She's a fresh face; she enjoys grassroots support, and she wants to repeal the handiwork not just of Franklin Roosevelt, but of Theodore Roosevelt.

.. and South Carolina. Indeed, another Indo-American with an Americanized name and a changed religion (can you name the other one?) became the "new face" of Southern conservative extremism:

In what will no doubt go down in history as one of the nation's nastiest political primaries, Nikki Haley survived multiple allegations of marital infidelity to win the most votes in South Carolina's hotly contested GOP gubernatorial race. But initial vote totals show that she didn't garner enough support  to avoid what could be an even wilder June 22 runoff election. ...

With the runoff  just two weeks away, the most immediate question is whom (her vanquished GOP primary opponents) Bauer and McMaster will throw their support to. Bauer, for his part, was associated with one of the affair rumors that circulated about Haley — though he denied involvement, even to the point of submitting to a lie-detector test. McMaster was quoted this week calling the primary a total embarrassment. Will the tawdry rumors about Haley's marriage live on through the runoff?

More likely, the focus will turn to Haley's actual politics and policy stands. Though she's been championed by the tea party movement, Haley is extremely close to disgraced Gov. Mark Sanford — whose own infidelity has made him a political outcast in the state. Though she has positioned herself as an outsider, Haley was viewed as Sanford's political heir apparent and is even being advised by many of his former key campaign aides. One of her big early endorsements came from Sanford's estranged wife, Jenny.

For her part, Haley has gone to great lengths to avoid being associated with Sanford. Asked earlier this week by CNN's Peter Hamby if she's sought political advice from Sanford, Haley at first said she hadn't. But then later, she admitted they had talked "a couple of times" — and even then, she quickly added, never "on policy advice or strategy."

It doesn't even matter who the Democratic opponent is, does it? This is South Carolina, after all.

Greens' benefactor may be illegal donor

Wayne Slater follows up.

One of the state's leading election experts says a petition drive funded through an out-of-state group to put the Green Party on the ballot this fall might have violated state law.

Party officials say the group, a nonprofit corporation, collected 92,000 signatures and delivered them as "a gift" so that the Green Party could field candidates in the November election. The arrangement for the petitions, set up by an Arizona Republican consultant, was revealed Sunday by The Dallas Morning News. ...

It's unclear who paid for the petition drive, but funding went through Take Initiative America, a Missouri nonprofit corporation. Buck Wood, an Austin lawyer and expert in election law, said Monday that such a transaction is illegal under state law.

"That corporation cannot make contributions to political parties in Texas. And to do so is a felony," he said. "It is also a felony for a political party to accept a corporate contribution."

[...]

Wood said that while an individual donor could legally bankroll petition drives to put a party on the ballot, corporations cannot. Wood has represented Democrats in litigation in which corporate money was illegally used to defeat political candidates.

In the case of the Texas Green Party, a Chicago-based petition-gathering company, Free and Equal Inc., gathered the signatures under contract with Take Initiative America.

It's unclear whether the petitions could be disallowed based on how the Green Party reports the donation. But the party and its leaders could face significant penalties if they are found to break the law.

And Harold Cook has a bit more:

But when the end result is that some of the voters who care most about the environment will get duped into voting for a candidate who won't get more than 5% of the total vote, helping the guy who calls the BP oil spill disaster an "act of God" win? That's just plain dirty pool, played at voters' expense.

[...]

Apparently, the Republican operative who organized the Green Party petition effort intends to list "Take Initiative America" as the donor of the in-kind contribution to the Green Party. That entity was organized in Missouri by a guy named Charles Hurth.

Who's Charles Hurth? I'm glad you asked. Meet Charles Hurth:

Apparently he's an ... um ... butt-biter. No, really.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is sitting in the shade with a cool drink as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

It's been a busy week in the Barnett Shale. TXsharon at BLUEDAZE: Drilling Reform for Texas has the TCEQ Timeline of Deception posted, which makes it more difficult for that agency to say "Oops!" Just in time for a summer drought we find that hydraulic fracturing seems to be contaminating Barnett Shale water.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants to know why the Texas Medical Board takes a year to suspend a doctor caught jerking off repeatedly in front of his office staff? And just suspension?

Lightseeker over at TexasKaos comments on Rick Perry's management of the Texas state bureaucracy. In short, it is a study in incompetence. Or as he has said elsewhere, if you hate government then no one should be surprised when you can't govern. Check it out....An Open Letter to Rick Perry: TCEQ screws up, lies about it - Gov.Perry has full confidence in them .

WhosPlayin is doing a server move this weekend and may not be back up by Monday, but wanted to spread the word about plans by Williams Co. to put a centralized gas production wastewater collection facility in Lewisville..

Off the Kuff looks behind the numbers of the recent UT/Trib poll on the ACA and the public schools.

McBlogger has never been a fan of self-aggrandizing politicians, which may explain his intense dislike of Todd Staples.

A federal judge in Houston wants all the lawsuits that will be filed against BP for damages associated with the Gulf oil disaster. Oh, and BP wants him to hear the cases as well. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs gathers some links on Judge Lynn Hughes.

Neil at Texas Liberal wondered how Houston mayor Annise Parker, a Democrat, could cite an article calling Houston a successful model of urbanism for the nation when 47% of Houston kids live at or below the poverty level? It is time for liberals, progressives and Democrats to ask more of Mayor Parker.

Texas Greens get an assist from an Arizona Republican

Via STC, this news is grating.

The liberal Green Party's uphill battle to get on the Texas ballot this fall has been fueled by a surprising benefactor: an out-of-state Republican consultant with a history of helping conservative causes and GOP candidates. ...

What's unknown is who paid for the previously undisclosed arrangement, pieced together by The Dallas Morning News. Green Party officials said they don't know who funded the effort. The Perry campaign denied any involvement. And Arizona Republican operative Tim Mooney, who set up the petition drive, refused to say.

Green Party officials said an outside group gathered the 92,000 signatures and gave them as "a gift" to the party, which delivered them to the secretary of state ...

Christina Tobin, who heads a Chicago-based petition-gathering company called Free and Equal Inc., said she was approached by Mooney to collect signatures for the Green Party of Texas.

Another group, Take Initiative America, based in Missouri, would provide payment, Mooney said.

Mooney estimated the cost at $200,000, but declined to give a specific figure or say who put up the money.

"Take Initiative America, being a nonprofit, doesn't disclose its donors, nor is it required to," said Mooney, who has little history of working in Texas. "Take Initiative America is a nonpartisan organization. They'd like to see everybody have a chance to get on the ballot – the more choices the better."

More from the Examiner:

Names of private citizens, especially Texan Republicans, are being bandied about, including but not limited to billionaire Harold Simmons of Dallas. Simmons could certainly afford it and there are those who point to the $3 million he contributed to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, to defeat John Kerry. Certainly as a man who likes to be known as someone who knows "more than a thousand ways to skin a cat", this would be an easy and relatively inexpensive amusing  last-minute surprise for Simmons, who has been called both Dallas' Angel of Grace and  Most Evil Genius. 

Whatever satisfaction one might take in the idea that additional choices are good for "little d" democracy is outweighed by the premise that the whole ploy is a result of conservatives being so afraid that Rick Perry will lost to Bill White that they had to resort to dirty tricks.

Update: Boyd Richie reacts ...

“The Green Party has become just another arm of the Republican Party and Governor Rick Perry's re-election effort and the Republican/Green Party coordination is a blow to the integrity of our election system,” said Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie. “The signatures gained through this Republican effort should be withdrawn and Green Party candidates, officials and supporters should save their integrity and repudiate petitions that undermine democracy and fair elections.”

... as does Burnt Orange.

Update II: Harvey Kronberg's commentary for News8Austin ...

The first mystery money in the 2010 election surfaced just this week. According to Wayne Slater at the Dallas Morning News, a secret out-of-state benefactor has coughed up an estimated $200,000 to pay for a petition drive to get the Green Party on the November ballot. The secret money was laundered through an Arizona Republican political consultant who won’t identify the actual source.

A Green Party slate will siphon off a few votes from Bill White and other Democratic candidates. A handful of votes can be significant. Republicans retained control of the Texas House last year when they won a single legislative race by seventeen votes.

Here we go again. Mysterious out-of-state money from secret sources poisoning Texas elections.

Sunday Funnies

Renew Houston, Stephen Costello, and Houston's flooding and drainage issues

I was part of a blogger gaggle this past week assembled by Renew Houston, which has a mission of placing a referendum on the November ballot dedicating a revenue stream to to fix -- over the long haul -- Houston's mobility infrastructure relating to flooding and drainage.

(Public policy isn't my area of expertise, but when pols and bloggers gather over a free lunch -- even when it's only Subway -- I will find a way to be there.)

There's a lot of this data at their site containing 'change-your-thinking' information, such as challenging the premise that Houston is a "new" city. It isn't. Even the suburbs that define Houston -- first Meyerland and then Sharpstown, then Clear Lake, Kingwood, and the western edge of Houston around the Energy Corridor -- are between forty and fifty years old. Then there's the fact that it takes twelve years in this town to go from a decision to rebuild a street to the beginning of the work to do so, because of a lack of necessary funds. This work is paid for out of the city's general revenue account, 60% of which is absorbed by public safety. So what results is patchwork, piecemeal measures ... which isn't really fixing anything.

Twelve years is, of course, completely unacceptable. But that happens when you have mayors and council members who are term-limited to six total years; greater focus on the short-term problems, less on the long-term ones. (I'm not advocating here for the abolishment of term limits, like others.)

I have written some harsh things about Councilman Costello (as have others), so I approached this meeting with an intent to have an open mind about an engineer who has made a lot of money from municipal contracts elected to city council, who then proposes a pretty vast public works program -- funded by a new fee -- from which his company stands to benefit greatly.

Whatever Costello gains politically or financially from the charter amendment Renew Houston proposes, the effort is worthwhile and the voters can decide the issue in November.

I signed the petition, and so should you.

Other coverage ...

The Chronicle -- here, here, and Rick Casey here

Off the Kuff (links to more there)

I sat next to Tory Gattis, so he will undoubtedly have something shortly. John's getting his wit on.

Houston Community Newspapers

ABC-13

Channel 39 (video link, has some really hilarious lost paperwork at the end)

Fox Houston

Calling all BP lawsuits: Judge Lynn Hughes

As some judges in New Orleans disqualify themselves from handling lawsuits over the Deepwater Horizon rig deaths and oil spill, a Houston judge Friday made it clear he's willing and able.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, whom BP lawyers requested by name to oversee pre-trial matters in all the federal lawsuits, met with lawyers on the first case filed in Houston federal court and talked about joining it with other lawsuits.

Hughes told the lawyers that he's handled complex matters before and that he has no conflict like the handful of judges in New Orleans and elsewhere who've recused themselves because of financial holdings or family ties to employees of the defendant companies or lawyers for those companies.

Hughes said he's posted his public financial disclosure on his own court website. Hughes owns some mineral rights and oil company stock but has no interest in the companies involved in the blowout and explosion that killed 11 and is wreaking economic and environmental havoc in the Gulf.

Do NOT miss the reader comments there. More on Hughes, first from the 1992 Houston Press' "Best of" reader poll/publication recommendations:

Republican Lynn Hughes hardly blinked when he advanced from his state district court (a civil one, no less) to the federal bench some 12 years ago. That characteristic aplomb has yet to be erased by some of the most demanding cases at the federal courthouse. He's coupled a healthy disdain for the traditional veil of legalese with a quiet but firm demeanor that has established him as one of the most independent jurists anywhere. Hughes demanded answers in a shady immunity deal for the notorious Graham brothers. And he didn't shy away from forcing the government to admit to submitting a false affidavit against an ex-CIA agent and lying to a grand jury in a bank fraud case. By now, his straightforward search for the truth is legendary among lawyers.

And Tom Kirkendall, from 2006:

First, he hammered the FDIC with a record sanctions award in the long-running case against Maxxam chairman Charles Hurwitz.

Then, he challenged the Enron Task Force's bludgeoning of a plea bargain from a mid-level former Enron executive.

Now, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes accused federal prosecutors of "reckless and conscious indifference" for bringing a fraud charge against Oklahoma lawyer John Claro and said he would award attorney's fees to Claro under the Hyde Act that provides sanctions for bad-faith prosecutions.

Lastly, Judgepedia. Scroll to the bottom and click on "The Robing Room" for some entertaining comments from those who've tried cases before Judge Hughes.

My personal opinion is that BP plaintiffs could do a lot worse than Hughes, whose no-bullshit reputation likely translates into rejecting a lot of claims he deems 'frivolous' associated with litigation requesting being 'made whole'.  Which is probably why BP likes him so much.

SCOTX issues emergency stay in bloggers' anonymity suit

On June 4, 2010, the Texas Supreme Court issued a highly unusual emergency stay in a case in which Beaumont trial judge Donald Floyd had ordered internet search giant Google to reveal the identities of two anonymous bloggers whose websites criticize notorious east Texas public figure Philip R. Klein. The high court’s order trumps the April 29, 2010, ruling by Beaumont’s Ninth Court of Appeals and prevents Judge Floyd’s order from being enforced.

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court recognizes the important First Amendment right to criticize public figures anonymously,” said Houston constitutional attorney Jeffrey L. Dorrell, who represents the bloggers. Klein argued that websites operationkleinwatch.com and samtheeagle.com content were “pure defamation” and not entitled to constitutional protection.

“Satirical parody is sometimes harsh, but if Jay Leno or David Letterman were sued every time they cracked a joke about Barack Obama or Paris Hilton, television would be a pretty barren source of amusement,” said Dorrell. Today’s ruling was the latest in a lawsuit in which Klein alleges that he has been defamed for, among other things, a parody of Dog Fancy magazine in which he was depicted under the caption, “Fat Men Who Love Their Dogs Too Much.”

The backstory ...

A political blogger in Southeast Texas has alleged that two other local bloggers have defamed and harassed him through their Web sites.

Philip R. Klein writes the Southeast Texas Political Review, a site that includes news and commentary about area elected officials and community leaders. "The story behind the story in East Texas politics," reads a banner describing the Web site on its home page.

As PRK Enterprises and Klein Investments, Klein sued the Operation Kleinwatch and Sam the Eagle blogs, as well as Google and its subsidiary blogger.com on Aug. 26 in Jefferson County District Court.

In the suit, PRK and Klein Investments are asking Google and blogger.com to identify all people responsible for running www.operationkleinwatch.blogspot.com and www.samtheeagleusa.blogspot.com.

They are also asking for the identities of all people who provided money or literary substance to the Web sites, who posted comments on the Web sites and those who are in any way affiliated with the Web sites.

[...]

The Web address www.samtheeagleusa.blogspot.com, first leads to a page containing a beach scene, soothing music and the words "Welcome to Sam the Eagle Center for peaceful meditation." To access the actual site, a user must click on "learn more about meditation" or instead go directly to http://www.notthisonetoojacques.blogspot.com/.

Then a home page pops up that appears similar to the Southeast Texas Political Review's home page, but with various satiric remarks scattered throughout.

At the moment it's not a beach scene but a picture of puppies, and you have to click on the link that isn't for puppies. Nor kitties.

So anyway, if any my fellow bloghermanos are ever in need of a lawyer, I can recommend one. And if you think I'm a nasty bastard ...

The minority of the opulent will always protect itself against the majority

Bush confesses to torture

Same as with Rove -- and Cheney and John Yoo and the rest of these criminals: can we arrest and prosecute him now?

"Yeah, we water-boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bush said of the terrorist who master-minded the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. He said that event shaped his presidency and convinced him the nation was in a war against terror.

"I'd do it again to save lives."

George W. Bush is nothing but a chickenshit silver-spoon sociopath, of course, but it's the current administration that has chosen to make itself complicit in the war crimes -- by not stopping the same "enhanced interrogation techniques" and refusing to prosecute the previous administration's thugs -- that is now the inconvenient truth.

How long before the free market plugs the Gulf oil gusher?

Bob Cesca -- author of One Nation Under Fear -- with the coffin nails and the hammer.

As I watch these robots slice the riser from the blowout preventer and read the news about lakes of oil moving towards the coasts of Florida, I'm wondering who to blame for this. The list is long, but, in part, I blame anyone who bought into the lines: "government is the problem" and "the era of big government is over." It's been systematic deregulation and the elevation of free market libertarian laissez-faire capitalism that have wrought this damage and allowed potentially destructive corporations to write their own rules and do as they please.

Like Bob, I'm not against capitalism. I AM against unbridled, greedy, shameless corporate executives who whine about wanting their lives back as thousands of lives along the Gulf coast are destroyed financially (not to mention the thousands of aquatic lives actually lost, drowned in goo).

After all, the nature of any corporation is to mitigate losses and increase revenues. Keep the shareholders as happy as possible, spend the least amount of money necessary, hire the best lawyers to avoid paying punitive fines and get back to drilling and selling oil for profit. This is what corporations do.

So it comes as no surprise that the only achievements since the rig explosion have involved releasing a syllabus of weasely remarks designed to ameliorate any damage to the BP brand, and literally harvesting oil from the riser.

At the peak of the riser insertion tube's efficacy, BP was successfully harvesting around 200,000 gallons of oil per day with a total capacity to process around 15,000 barrels per day. That's a lot of milkshake drinking in the middle of an unprecedented oil spill. And so BP will probably do what they always do. Refine and sell those barrels for a profit. And once the relief wells are completed, they'll do the same.

Mitigate. Ameliorate. Mediate. And then back to business.

Regardless of Justice Department investigations or lawsuits or cleanup costs, BP will emerge from this disaster and continue to profit from the drilling and selling of petroleum, including the oil from Macondo prospect.

Exxon, as precedent, is now Exxon-Mobil and is doing just fine. It endlessly appealed the fines imposed as the result of Valdez oil spill and whittled the down the cost of the disaster to corporate pocket change, and whatever money they paid out was covered by insurance policies.

Read that again. Exxon almost entirely escaped financial damages from the Valdez. In fact, it spent most of the last 21 years appealing its financial liability related to the Prince William Sound disaster. Why? Mitigating losses, and increasing revenues. There's no reason or evidence to believe that BP will be any different, lest anyone think they're in this to take full responsibility and do whatever it takes to repair the Gulf waters and its coastline.

Don't forget to lie your ass off while you're doing all that mitigating, either.

Before a drop of oil was spilled, they deliberately refused to invest in crucial failsafe mechanisms to prevent this sort of tragedy in the first place.

Following the rig explosion, they detained workers who witnessed the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

They attempted to distribute ridiculously small settlement offers.

They consistently low-balled the estimated volume of oil leaking from the riser and blowout preventer, arguably to avoid harsher liability.

They brazenly refused to stop using Corexit despite evidence that it was more toxic than other chemical dispersants.

BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, tried to tell us that the environmental damage will be "very, very modest."
 
They ordered federal Coast Guard officers to shoo the press away from tar-balled beaches.

They're preventing other reporters from photographing dead animals.

This week, they not only denied the existence of massive underwater plumes of dispersed oil, but, on top of it all, they've hired Dick Cheney's former press secretary to run their PR efforts. Any minute now, I'm half expecting to hear that the oil spill is in its "last throes."

Yet what you will read today, especially in the newspaper of record in the nation's oil capital from the Chronically conservative commenters is how horrible that socialist Obama is for halting offshore drilling, how terrible this news is for jobs in the Southeast Texas oilpatch, and yaddayaddayadda.

Forty years of corporate deregulation by conservative Republican Ayn Rand fetishists (and their Democratic enablers) have successfully poisoned the Gulf of Mexico. Ironically, the most liberal pro-regulation president in this same span of time -- the president who has announced on several occasions a significant break from Reagan's "government is the problem" mantra -- appears to be the only politician being blamed for this so far. One of many reasons why I fear it'll be another 40 years before we roll back this free market monster.

And, as I watch this video, the solution occurs to me: they should just plug the oil leak with every single existing copy of Atlas Shrugged.

Nationalize BP's American operations -- in the form of Robert Reich's suggestion regarding temporary receivership, arrest and charge Tony Hayward, and send a little message to all the other petroleum corporate thugs that "bidness as use-you-all" is. over.

Memorial Day Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes you all had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

This week on Left of College Station, Teddy asks if Don't Ask, Don't Tell could be coming to an end, and also covers the week in headlines. Teddy at will be looking back this week at highlights from Left of College Station's first two years of blogging, and will be taking the month of June off from blogging. Look for more in-depth coverage of politics and social commentary in July, including extensive research and investigations. Thanks to the Texas Progressive Alliance for supporting political and social thought to the Left of College Station.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson points out that even though there's been another audit of TxDOT, nothing will change until Texas gets a new governor: TxDOT's management audit, we've heard it all before.

Harris County is considering creating an elections administration department with a non-partisan, unelected appointee at the helm. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs is in favor of it, but irregular contributor OpenSourceDem is not.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is tired of racist, Republican fearmongerers driving poor policy decisions on the border.

Off the Kuff took a close look at the UT/Texas Trib poll of the governor's race.

WhosPlayin hopes everyone has a nice Memorial Day, and has a message of gratitude and remembrance of those who have fallen in the service of our country.

A Houston right-wing talk show host and former Houston city council member calls for bombing of a mosque. Bay Area Houston has an opinion. Imagine that.

Asian American Action Fund Blog's Justin invites everyone to Houston to attend the OCA National Convention June 17-20. Festivities include panel discussions, awards gala, and free Starry Night Market and Film Festival. Eric Byler and Coffee Party founder Annabel Park's immigration documentary "9500 Liberty" will be shown.

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw helps us understand Rick Perry's complaints about the EPA taking over the permitting process from the toothless Minerals Management Service, I mean the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Surprisingly enough, Mr. "Act of God" is upset he can't continue his business first, second and always approach to environmental regulations. Take at look, at Governor Perry to the EPA: Back Off.

Neil at Texas Liberal offered up a 58-second video where he listed eight points about democracy while standing in front of a car demolition lot near the Houston Ship Channel. Every place is the right place to talk about freedom.

Sunday Funnies

Dennis Hopper 1936 - 2010

Dennis Hopper — actor (Rebel Without a Cause, Blue Velvet), director (Easy Rider, Colors), screenwriter, photographer, painter, hellraiser, raconteur, and no-bull Hollywood legend — died of prostate cancer at his house in Venice Beach, in Los Angeles (yesterday). He was 74.

Hopper may have had the surest hand on the zeitgeist of anyone in Hollywood, putting his fingerprints on a series of iconic, era-defining pictures. He played a supporting role in the ultimate '50s teen drama, Rebel Without a Cause (1955); legitimized hippies on film (and in Hollywood's power structure) with Easy Rider (1969); contributed a memorable cameo as a crazed journalist to Francis Ford Coppola's New Hollywood apotheosis Apocalypse Now (1979); concocted one of the scariest of all screen villains as Frank Booth in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986); directed the gang drama Colors (1988) with its hit title track by Ice-T just as L.A.'s Bloods and Crips were making news; and completely stole the blockbuster Speed (1994) as the bad guy. Later in life he became a widely exhibited photographer and published collections of his images.

He was a member of a small cadre of baby boomers who changed the cinema industry in the '60's.

With its portrait of counterculture heroes raising their middle fingers to the uptight middle-class hypocrisies, "Easy Rider" became the cinematic symbol of the 1960s, a celluloid anthem to freedom, macho bravado and anti-establishment rebellion. As a low-budget independent film that earned huge amounts of money, it also triggered a seismic shift in Hollywood, which began eagerly to court the youth market and look for similarly disreputable properties to co-opt.

My favorite recent role was that of Huey Walker in Flashback, a film which managed to satire the '60's at every plot turn. Keifer Sutherland's role as son-of-flower-children-turned-FBI-agent in hot pursuit of Hopper's Abby Hoffman-ish Walker is hilarious. More from the Rolling Stone link:

Hopper spent the '90s and '00s in a reliable niche as a hipster emeritus, frequently appearing on talk shows and playing a wide range of roles, though in Blue Velvet's wake he was most frequently identified with villain roles.

The alcoholic coach in Hoosiers, the intergalactic contraband hauler in Space Truckers, the band manager in White Star ... even his minorly freaky roles were legend. Concluding from the WaPo link:

As the sexually compulsive, pathologically troubled villain Frank Booth, Hopper -- three years clean and sober -- found a way to combine the knife-edge madness he had always possessed with newfound powers of control and discipline.

Hopper left the planet too soon, but it was still gratifying to see him turn what could have been a career of flameouts and sad self-destruction into a triumph of endurance. Now that he's gone, he has left behind a generation of actors who grasp at his wildness with mannerisms and empty emoting, but who can never reach that precise alchemy of derangement and focus that Hopper embodied at his best. ... It's an irony Hopper himself surely appreciated that the man who embodied antiauthoritarianism at its most anarchic finally realized his best artistic self when he embraced self-control.

Update: It's kind of difficult to picture Hopper, Art Linkletter, and Gary Coleman all going anywhere together ... and of course, maybe they didn't.

College World Series update

The Lamar University baseball team continued its hit parade Saturday in a Southland Conference tournament championship-clinching game.

The Cardinals tallied a season-high 22 hits and rolled to a 17-7 victory against Texas State in the conference championship game at Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi. ...

The conference tournament championship is Lamar's third in the Southland, fifth overall and its first since 2004. By winning, the Cardinals are automatically qualified for the 64-team NCAA tournament. The tournament field will be announced at 11:30 a.m. Monday on ESPN.

Lamar entered the tournament as the No. 7 seed but won four straight tournament games. Lamar's last three victories came against teams against which Lamar failed to win in seven regular season games.

****

After scoring 53 runs in the first three days of the tournament — all wins — top-seeded Rice was stymied by the Southern Mississippi duo of Todd McInnis, the two-time C-USA Pitcher of the Year, and Scott Copeland, who hasn’t lost yet this season and was working on two days of rest.

After playing nearly flawlessly for three days, the Owls were merely mortal in a 7-4 loss. ...

Two errors, four unearned runs and 10 runners left on base mean that, for the only the second time in the last five years, the conference trophy doesn’t reside with Rice (38-21). The Golden Eagles (35-22), jubilant after Diego Seastrunk’s groundout to first base for the final out, earned the league’s automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament.

Back in February when I watched my undefeated Cardinals whip the winless Owls, I figured the team was destined for big things. But they had a terrible regular season, while Rice returned to their normal, dominant selves. This upset victory in their conference tournament, and Rice's fade in theirs, was another reversal of fortune for both teams. Rice may still make the CWS as an at-large representative on the strength of a 38-21 record and their storied reputation.

And hopefully there will be some regional and super-regional games nearby to attend.

Maddow's "That was Then, This is Then"

Via David Ortez and others, Rachel Maddow's segment here exposes the oil industry as woefully unprepared for underwater well blowouts. As they have been for more than thirty-one years, the last time something much like this happened.



Maddow is doing some of the best reporting on television, and her show has become a must-DVR for me.

Happy Mem Day everyone

Don't forget the reason for the season. We all get to grill and shop and sun because of men like Lieutenant Finn:

Retired Navy Lt. John Finn - the first American to receive the nation's highest military award for defending sailors under a torrent of gunfire during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - died Thursday. He was 100.

Finn was the oldest of 97 Medal of Honor recipients from World War II still living. He died at a nursing home for veterans in Chula Vista, outside San Diego, according to a Navy statement.

Despite head wounds and other injuries, Finn, the chief of ordnance for an air squadron, continuously fired a .50-caliber machine gun from an exposed position as bullets and bombs pounded the Naval Air Station at Kaneohe Bay in Oahu. He then supervised the rearming of returning American planes.

"Here they're paying you for doing your duty, and that's what I did," Finn told The Associated Press before his 100th birthday. "I never intended to be a hero. But on Dec. 7, by God, we're in a war."

I'd like to quote from his citation.

For extraordinary heroism, distinguished service, and devotion above and beyond the call of duty. During the first attack by Japanese airplanes on the Naval Air Station, Kanoehe Bay, on 7 December 1941, Lieutenant Finn promptly secured and manned a 50-caliber machine gun mounted on an instruction stand in a completely exposed section of the parking ramp, which was under heavy enemy machine-gun strafing fire. Although painfully wounded many times, he continued to man this gun and to return the enemy's fire vigorously and with telling effect throughout the enemy strafing and bombing attacks and with complete disregard for his own personal safety. It was only by specific orders that he was persuaded to leave his post to seek medical attention. Following first-aid treatment, although obviously suffering much pain and moving with great difficulty, he returned to the squadron area and actively supervised the rearming of returning planes. His extraordinary heroism and conduct in this action were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

They don't make 'em like that any more. RIP.